


Wolf Trap

by TunaYuna



Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hatake Kakashi Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-07-31 15:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20117557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TunaYuna/pseuds/TunaYuna
Summary: When Kakashi discovers he's not as alone as he thought, he struggles to become a responsible adult. Thankfully, the kid seems self-sufficient enough.AU: comrades are all well and good, but Kakashi misses having a family.





	1. Loss part 1

He’s almost three years old when his mother is taken from him. For the past month or so, she’s been lethargic, skin pale and clammy and several degrees too warm. The smell of sickness, wrongness, clings to her skin. They left her to the bed roll and left watery broth as their only solution to her obvious illness and left him at her side only during the dark hours of the night. During the early morning, before the sun has crested the horizon and the guards come to retrieve him, when her breathing is labored and she struggles from fevered dreams, does she pet his hair and give a wavering smile. And if he wasn’t who he is, he wouldn’t have noticed the grim set to her lips when she thinks he’s not looking her way.

It’s after another day of laborious torture which they call “training.” They none too gently set him down, more like toss, but he’s too exhausted to really care beyond the jarring of his elbow against the cement floor. He ignores the clang of the door shutting, instead turns to regard his mother’s form in the sliver of light provided by the crack in the doorframe. No matter the time of day or night, the lights never ceases.

He thinks she’s asleep.

Before the illness drained her of strength and hollowed her cheeks, she would be sitting up waiting for him to return, arms already open and their one, ratty blanket curled around her waist. Her amber eyes would rove his form, worry scrunching her brow and concern pinching her lips. He would sit against her chest, head pillowed against her breasts, and she would gently dab at his scrapes with a damp scrap of cloth.

However, he thinks tonight will be like this past month. Where, when he arrives back to their small cell, she’ll be curled on her side, asleep, and the bedroll already damp with cold sweat.

He’s correct. To some degree. She is lying on her side, but the bedroll isn’t damp with sweat. For once, her scent isn’t sour with sickness, and he tries so hard not to let hope rise in his chest. He crawls onto the bedroll and nudges his way into the circle of her arms, and for the first time in weeks he feels her arms tighten their embrace. He stiffens momentarily in surprise to find her awake and cranes his head upwards to try and gauge her expression. In the dim light he can see that her face is relaxed, and the undercurrent of pain and exhaustion is momentarily gone. Her eyes are closed and there’s a small smile curling the corners of her lips.

He debates breaking the silence, but there is a fear that if he does, that this moment will fall apart. That she will fall apart and again be trapped in a fever haze, and he’ll again he helpless to stop it.

Before he can decide, she’s lowering her head until her lips brush the shell of his ear. “Mana…” she whispers.

He waits for her to continue. In the distance, he can hear the guards walking along the hallways, their boots shuffling across stone.

“Your father was a Hatake.” He jolts at this sudden declaration and starts to speak, “Mother, what…?”

“Shh, listen.” Here she pauses again.

He doesn’t know what to think. The one time he questioned where he came from, she hadn’t answered. Rather, chose silence with a conflicted look. When he later posed the question to the medic-nin, one of the few occasions where he actually chose to talk to the shinobi, the man merely stared at him and answered with a pithy, “test tube.”

Now, his mother is finally giving him an answer. Does that mean the medic-nin lied? He wasn’t from a test tube, but his origins started with a man named Hatake.

His mother continues whispering late into the night, her breath hot against his ear and her hand idly stroking his hair. He’s exhausted from earlier, but he’s too wired to do anything but remain awake and attentive as she explains.

His benefactor who clothes and feeds and trains him is a man named Orochimaru, and Mana was one of his projects. Hatake was a skilled shinobi, and by desecrating his grave, Mana is able to come into existence.

She switches topics quickly and after years of silence spins him a tale of her own clan. They’re bonded to the wolves and over time have slowly taken on some of their aspects. That’s why their eyes are amber and their senses a little sharper than average. She talks about her home in the forest by the frigid mountains, and how more than half the year there is snow on the ground. Mana doesn’t know what snow is and asks her to describe it in detail; it’s tiny flakes of coldness, condensed into specks of ice, and when it lands on your hands it gradually melts with a frigid kiss. He’s stunned when she says each snowflake is unique and rarely, on special days every few years, the snowflakes can get as big as thirty centimeters across. At this point, he’s turned towards her chest with his head tucked under her chin, and he breathes against her skin that one day, they’re going to visit her home together and he’ll find her the biggest snowflake in the world. She squeezes him tighter before continuing.

In the morning, the cell is cold. Ice cold where Mana can feel it in his bones and no matter how hard he shivers he can’t seem to get warm. And that’s when he knows. Although he is wrapped, tight, in his mother’s embrace, there’s no warmth against his back.

Mana is almost three and his only piece of family has passed away in the early morning, after long hours of hushed whispers where she divulged everything she refused to say before.

When they come to unlock the metal door, it creaks on its hinges as it opens. And when they step in to grab his arm where it lays forlorn on the floor, to drag him away, he lets them. He refuses to turn to look at where his mother lays.

But he can picture it: her garnet hair is fanned around her resting head, creating a soft pillow that reflects in the hall light like blood. 


	2. Loss part 2

Mana is six years old when he finally meets Orochimaru.

It has been almost five years since he began his “training”, and Orochimaru wants to see the fruits of his labour. Or, rather, his minions’ labour.

Mana has changed within that short timeframe. His mother’s death had a visceral impact on him; he became colder, harder, compressing himself down into a well-honed machine. Although he despises everything about his life, that does not stop him from gleaning as much as possible from his trainers.

They teach him how to handle various weapons, using them against him until he becomes proficient enough to defend himself. And eventually to attack with such precision and ruthlessness that in this dog-eat-dog-world, he finally gains a healthy amount of respect within the base.

In the grand scheme of Orochimaru’s projects, Mana isn’t anything special, merely a byproduct of the twisted man’s curiosity. They haven’t designated him with a role yet, but they tell him to be a good tool, to become stronger and stronger, and maybe one day Orochimaru will have a use for him.

He likes taijutsu, likes the feel of flesh hitting flesh with a dull thud and the vibrations that wrack his body when he blocks a punch or a kick. He’s flexible and nimble and uses it to his advantage to outmaneuver his instructors, twisting his body around their attacks.

He likes ninjutsu even more. Gathering chakra and transforming it into waves of destruction feels a bit like magic. He’s young, but he’s been at this for as long as he can remember, so his chakra reserves are already dense and deep. He can go a whole day of running lightning down the edge of his blades without feeling seriously winded. The chakra crackles and sharpens into pinprick points, and he creates a circular loop so he doesn’t waste a drop. The blades can slice through flesh and bone like softened butter. He knows, because just the other day they brought a traitor to kneel before him and told him to start cutting.

Desensitization is what they called that training session.

At the beginning (after the end, when his world fell apart after the death of his mother), he was all simmering anger, his rage like molten rocks bubbling under the surface of his skin. It was because of this Orochimaru that he and his mother were confined to a dank cell underground. And it is because of him that his mother did not receive the care she direly needed even though it would have been so simple, so easy, to heal her of her illness when there were medic-nins buzzing around the medbay.

Now the anger has become a familiar thing, a living beast that prowls in his head, biding its time and planning for its revenge.

Mana has traveled to another of Orochimaru’s bases, this one larger and filled with more personnel than his own. He stands in a wide, open room. The ceiling is tall, the stone melting into darkness before he can see the end of it, and Orochimaru sits up high on a dais. His long black hair blends in with the shadows, but the virulent yellow of his eyes practically glows in the low light. He does not deign to say anything; rather, he almost looks bored with his head resting against a raised fist, like a king before his court. A medic-nin who Mana recognizes from his yearly checkups stands to his left.

Mana does not address either of them, merely waits patiently in the center of the room with arms held loosely by his side. He can feel the man’s gaze heavy on the side of his face. He resolutely ignores it.

This is meant to be as much of a demonstration for Orochimaru and as well as a survival test for his test subjects. Mana is the first to arrive in the hall; he wants to size up his competition.

When the first competitor emerges from the dark hallway and breaches the threshold to appear under the hall lights, Mana sucks in a sharp breath. The boy has identical amber eyes and the same thin lips and tapered ears. His nose is a little larger and his chin is rounded instead of pointed. His hair is a dark auburn that reminds Mana painfully of his mother; but besides these differences, they are practically identical.

The boy must recognize the similarities too because he freezes just inside the doorway. His face is too open, too vulnerable for who is watching them and for where they are. Mana wishes desperately that his clansman would mirror his personality just as much as his face. But it is plain to see that the child – for he is a child in the way he regards Mana with something that looks unbearably like hope and yearning – is too ingenuous for what Orochimaru has planned.

Mana settles his expression into apathetic neutrality; his features could be carved from marble. He won’t allow Orochimaru the satisfaction of seeing him startled. 

For all the years Mana has lived, he has never seen another of his age.

The boy comes closer and introduces himself, Jun – Mana thinks the name is fitting; although they are trapped in this hellhole, the boy is too pure. He’s younger than Mana, and the precocious child starts addressing him as niisan. The child doesn’t seem to notice that Mana doesn’t speak. His rambling is caused by equal parts fear of the unknown and excitement of his newly discovered clansman.

The boy, Jun, hasn’t been told why he’s here in the hall with Mana. And apparently, he hasn’t noticed that they have an audience. Mana doesn’t want to talk to Jun. He doesn’t want to answer his questions and tell him that he’s going to die today and Mana will most likely be his executioner.

Mana wants to kill himself. Better yet, kill Orochimaru and whisk away the only living family member he has. But he’s too weak at the moment. He barely wins one fight out of three with his instructors, and Mana knows his instructors are negligible in comparison to Orochimaru. As if he can hear his thoughts, Mana sees a smirk tilt Orochimaru’s lips from the corner of his eye. His knuckles turn white with how hard he clenches them by his side.

It’s already too much – Jun is too much. But then more and more children start entering the chamber. Thankfully none are sporting amber eyes or silvery locks.

Mana sends a silent prayer to any deity that may be listening. He doesn’t want to do what he knows he has to. Although the boy is family – kami, the last time he thought the word family was the day his mother passed away – Mana is above all a survivor. If it means he has to sell his soul to this devil in his midst to survive, Mana will strike down Jun so he may one day escape this hellhole.

The medic-nin besides Orochimaru finally explains why they are all here – Mana hates that he uses the term “battle royale” – Mana clamps down on his rolling emotions, solidifies himself into frigid, unfeeling cold, and unsheathes a tanto into each hand. And when Orochimaru hisses, “begin,” Mana does not hesitate to strike out at his side. Wide amber eyes stare up at him in shock – Mana tries to make his death as painless as possible, but still, Mana’s heart throbs. Mana lets himself go.

By the time he flicks the blood off his blades in a chamber littered with bodies that are too young and too pure, Mana lets the cold numb him from the inside out. He is facing Orochimaru with his tantos angled out at his side. He’s panting and struggling to take in breaths and he can feel his arms shaking from exertion. He glares from under silver fringe.

Orochimaru raises an eyebrow at him, looking wholly unimpressed. He gives a polite clap before standing and exiting the room. The fucker.


	3. Loss part 3

Mana spends his days reading scrolls on chakra theory and sparring with his instructors. Though, they’re not really his instructors anymore. He’s already learned whatever they could offer; he’s not surprised, the strongest among them isn’t more than a high chunin at best. In a few days’ time, he’ll be transferred to one of the bigger hide outs, closer to the main base where Orochimaru spends the majority of his time. There, he’s supposed to train alongside the other freaks and test subjects Orochimaru has been cultivating. They dangle the possibility of becoming one of Orochimaru’s elite bodyguards before his eyes, as if that’s some sort of divine prize he wants. They say Orochimaru may even personally train him in kenjutsu if he exceeds their expectations. The thought of spending any time in his presence makes Mana nauseous. He’s heard the rumors of what happens when little boys have Orochimaru’s attention.

Mana is eight years old and just days before he’s supposed to move, he finally enacts his plan. He waits for twilight, when everyone else is in the cafeteria after a day’s work and the only ones left are the guards outside and the medic-nins in their office. No one stops him when he wanders away from the food hall, and those he does pass give do not acknowledge him. Most refuse to meet his eyes.

He stands on the threshold to the medbay. It smells of sharp disinfectant that burns his nose. The medic-nin closest to him is the only one to glance his way. Their gaze is directed over his head, resolutely avoiding his eyes with tense disinterest. Mana never willingly comes to the medbay.

Mana strikes before they know what is happening. Settling a low-level genjutsu on them is easy. And then removing them of weapons and tying them up only takes a few minutes at most, not enough for someone to stumble in and discover what he’s doing. By now they’re awake and struggling against their bonds, but even though they’re ninja themselves, Mana has been trained, pushed to his breaking point and over the edge, and has been remade into a living weapon by their hands. Incapacitating them isn’t that hard.

He locks them in the room before heading to where everyone else is gathered.

No one’s surprised to see him in his full tactical gear, and no one is surprised when he doesn’t veer towards the food line. They think him weird, just a little too off, too jagged to be considered whole and sane. They avoid looking at his person unless absolutely necessary, and even then, it is always just glances, above his head or just shy of his nose. Never his eyes.

No one’s watching him when he raises his hands to form a cross with his fingers, and it’s only when there is a soft poof sound and a small cloud of smoke does anyone bother to finally look .

One clone turns back the way Mana has come from, already heading towards the exit to deal with the outside guards. They’re meant to sound the alarm when external threats are presented. They’re not expecting an attack from behind. His other clone doesn’t acknowledge anyone when he quickly scales the wall and runs across the ceiling to the other side of the room in a blink of an eye. It’s when the clone drops down and stations himself in the only other entrance, and Mana himself unsheathes his kantos from across his back does someone finally stand up from the rows of dining tables.

They know what’s about to happen. Mana doesn’t have to explain. This has been building since the day he was born, and it was only a matter of the clock counting down. It doesn’t mean that the other ninjas aren’t prepared to die without a fight.

Mana charges the nearest table. His opponents are already flashing through hand signs. He slices the first guy in a crisscross motion, from shoulders to opposite hips and he screams when he goes down. Someone slams their palms against the ground and hands made of concrete rise up with a sound of grinding earth. He’s already lunging at his next target before the hands slam together on empty air with a deafening crash. The room is in chaos. Although it’s large enough to hold the twenty odd men and women for meals, with these many fighters all crammed into one space, there’s not enough leeway.

Mana is a whirlwind of flashing blades. Shinobi and kunoichi charge him all at once; they’re not used to fighting together as a cohesive unit and his tantos make quick work of limbs. There’s the sound of metal striking metal as kunais and shurikens are blocked. He twists to avoid punches and kicks and throws his tantos at anyone brave enough to try and engage him in a battle with ninjutsu. The metal of his swords sings with electricity, and when they pierce through someone’s chest, bolts of lightning arc off of his body to those closest to him. Then they all sing together.

Across the room, his double is engaged in a similar dance. There are already two ninjas laying at his feet in their own circles of blood. He’s blocking sword strikes from his left and ducks to avoid a blazing stream of fire. There’s a fiery heat that singes his hair and the room suddenly smells like smoke. Using the fire to cover his movements, the clone throws one of his tanto straight, into the inferno, and suddenly the jutsu is cut short on a pained gasp.

Someone comes up behind him, swinging a sword down towards his head. He turns and blocks with his remaining tanto. And blocks the next swipe. Then he’s striking out. They deflect it and try again with an overhead swing. The clone parries but the man is taller and stronger and the clone’s arms give under pressure. The man sees his opening and his sword comes crashing down again. The clone tucks and dives under the sword, and the man swings his sword in a great arc behind him, just missing the clone by a scant millimeter. The clone is quick to attack the man’s open back; he swings his tanto. A burst of wind chakra goes flying in a razor thin arc. The man goes to duck, but he’s not expecting the follow up bolt of electricity. The man screams in pain but doesn’t drop his weapon. The clone doesn’t relent. He’s quick to get under the man’s guard and his tanto slides across his throat.

Mana aims a roundhouse kick at someone’s head, but they block with crossed arms. He doesn’t lose momentum though and uses them as a springboard; suddenly he’s airborne. Mana throws a kunai down with a shuriken in its wake; the kunai is parried, but the shuriken strikes its target.

Mana reaches out with both arms, solidifies his chakra, and yanks . His tantos come flying back into his hands, unhindered by any person in their path. His clone mirrors his action and jumps. Then, they’re airborne and back to back. They both move their tantos into one hand, reach back, and then their fingers intertwine as they flash through a set of hand seals, faster than the normal eye can perceive.

Together, they intone, “Raiton: Raiu.”

Great bolts of thunder rain down on the fleeing shinobi and kunoichi, seeking their target with unerring accuracy. Their silhouettes stand in sharp relief against the blue-white electricity, and the screeching of the lightning is loud in the enclosed space – it drowns out the screams – and for a second the world stands still in repose.

When Mana and the clone touch ground once again, the bodies drop.

The air smells clean and sharp, ozone, and underneath is the smell of burnt flesh. Mana and his clone slowly inspect the bodies, slitting throats here and there to ensure they do not leave any survivors. The clone he sent off to deal with the guards has dispelled, and Mana pauses for a moment to review the memories.

He’s kind of miffed at how easy everything is going. Then again, the people Orochimaru hire aren’t the most talented. They’re the desperate and the desolate, willing to do anything for a coin or for a place where their lack of morality won’t be questioned. There are the thrill seekers and those who haven’t progressed beyond what is taught in the Hidden Villages’ academies, and finally the missing-nin; they’re not worth any note though, they don’t have a page in any bingo book.

Anyone credible would be closer to Orchimaru’s main base, not here in one of his distant hideouts. This is more a way stop for any passing parties or a temporary holding cell along transit. It’s only convenient enough to act as Mana’s home as well – home is stretching the word.

Mana and his clone make their way to the medbay. The medic-nins inside are exactly where he left them. When Mana approaches, they’re pale and stare up at him with wide eyes. They for sure heard the screams from down the hall. Mana’s fight wasn’t exactly silent.

Mana ignores his bruises and minor scrapes.

His clone grabs the closest medic-nin. He’s still bound, but the cloth is removed from his mouth, and the clone grabs him by the hair and holds a kunai to his throat. The medic-nin whimpers in the back of his throat. Mana wants to snarl.

“Where are the records stored?” The medic-nins flinch at the sound of his voice. He rarely ever talks, and they’re surprised by how deep his voice is for a child of only eight.

“Th-they’re kept under lock and key in the back.” The medic-nin gasps. He points with a shaky finger at a small closet.

Mana scowls at him and his pathetic display. His clone mirrors his expression.

While the clone maintains his hold and Mana goes to investigate. There’s only one metal filing cabinet and it’s covered in dust. The closet smells like paper and rusting metal, but it’s a small reprieve from the acrid burn of disinfectant in the main room. It’s easy to open a drawer with a twist of a kunai shoved into the keyhole. Mana scoops out the folders and thumbs through them until he sees the words “Mana.”

The first page has a picture of him that’s a year old taped to the upper right corner. His expression is surly, and his amber eyes glare out from under short bangs. There’s a general profile on him: his height, age, birthday, and general descriptors on his abilities. Then there are sheets after sheets after sheets that are intimately detailed of his physiology and his chakra and his responses to certain stimuli and the results of the many, many tests conducted over an eight-year span.

Mana feels sick, like he will puke up every last bad memory as he stares down at a research paper titled facultative metamorphosis of nature transformations . Unbidden, the memories are visceral, and Mana can’t stop himself from diving headfirst back into those moments when he was only four. These medic-nins thought to analyze the inherency of basic elemental chakra natures and whether differing elements could be bolstered optionally in response to circumstances rather than by nature. He remembers weeks suspended in something that was thicker than water and the sharp sting of static shock, a cycle of electricity constantly being recycled again and again. He remembers needles piercing his skin and wires crisscrossing his body until he resembled more machine than human and the way these medic-nin stared up at him with shrewd eyes and clipboards. He couldn’t breathe then. The jell-like solution was everywhere. Pressed against and in his nose and lungs, and after they finally finished their experimentation, it took him days on ventilation to properly learn how to regulate his airflow and not gasp like a drowning man every time he tried to sleep.

Now Mana controls his breathing and counts to ten in his head, ignoring the phantom sensations of sliding fluid pressed inside his throat.

His hands shake when he closes the folder. He grips the papers so tightly that his knuckles turn white and he can feel the press of nails against the palm of his flesh. It grounds him.

Anything of note like his family lineage and possible blood relations is missing.

Mana clenches his jaw and lets his expression shutter back into familiar apathetic neutrality before stepping back into the medbay. “Where is the rest?” his voice is low and rasps. He ignores the urge to swallow.

“That’s it, I swear! There’s nothing else!” the medic-nin shouts. “Mana-sama, please release us, we’ve always been good to you.”

Mana wants to snort at that, but it’s far too undignified. He remembers growing up under their tender care. They poked and prodded, took samples and strapped him to metal tables.

His eyes connect with his clone’s and he gives a subtle dip of his head. The clone’s grip tightens, and his kunai starts to press harder.

“W-wait! They keep anything of interest at the main base!” the man shouts. The clone’s hand stays for a moment. Capitalizing on his hesitation, the man continues, “I have connections there! Just tell me what you’re looking for and I can get it for you!”

Mana considers him for a moment. He’s older, already going grey at the temples and wrinkles crowding his mouth. He may have connections at the other bases, or he may not. Mana doesn’t have the time to hang around and find out, and even if the man is telling the truth, he doesn’t trust him.

Mana considers asking him about his family, if there are any surviving Hatakes, about his mother’s clan and whether or not he has anymore brothers sprinkled throughout Orochimaru’s bases.

He doesn’t. Instead, he watches as his clone finally draws the kunai across the man’s throat in a straight line. The blood is immediate and eager, flowing over the clone’s fingers in lovely rivulets. There’s a momentary spray, like pressure is being released from a valve, and Mana is just out of reach of the few droplets that come his way.

The sharp sting of disinfectant is replaced by the coppery scent of blood. Mana doesn’t know which he prefers.

The remaining two medic-nins give muffled screams and they jerk in their bindings. Their tears run freely, and they struggle together to inch as far away from the duo as possible. Their eyes are wide and imploring, and he thinks he can hear them chanting “please, please, please, please” behind their gags. He ignores them. The clone will finish his job.

Mana turns back to the filing cabinet and scoops out all of the folders. He doesn’t have time to read them now, so he seals them in a storage scroll and cracks open the next drawer. He does the same thing to the files he finds there. He tucks the storage scroll into his side pouch at his hip.

Mana ignores the scene to his left when he exits the closet and heads down the hallway to his room where his pack is waiting for him. It has similar storage scrolls to the one he’s carrying now, except these hold books from the small library and weapons from the armory. His favorite kimono is folded neatly at the top.

When Mana’s standing in the main hallway that leads to the exit, he pauses for a moment before turning down a different path. This new route leads further down into the earth, to the dungeon where the prisoners are held. Mana is curious to discover what will be lingering behind the bars.

This section of the base is deep underground and cold, the packed dirt acting as a natural insulator. It smells like wet earth with a hint of ammonia and the air is stagnant this deep down here without any possibility for a fresh breeze. Half of the lights are burned out so the halls are dim, but Mana isn’t afraid.

The first few stalls are disappointing. They’re civilians the medic-nins have liberally experimented on, and they’re disfigured into grotesque shapes. Some don’t stir at his presence, remaining grey lumps on the floor while others snarl against their cages with rabid fever.

It’s in the very back, the last stall in fact, where he finds something that makes this exploration worthwhile.

It’s a man, just on the cusp of adulthood with dark brown hair that looks black in the low lighting. It’s long and greasy and hangs in his face in thick strands, but Mana thinks there’s something beautiful in how it falls in a straight waterfall of ink. The man is slumped against the wall with his legs outstretched in front of him. The right one is turned at a weird angle and there’s bandages already stained rust wrapped around his thigh. His hands rest by his sides, the metal links between the chakra suppressors clamped around his wrists pulled taut. His skin is covered in grime, and Mana can’t tell if he’s tan or if that’s just from the dirt.

For a moment Mana thinks he’s dead, and that’s disappointing because Mana already thought the shinobi manning this base were incompetent enough. Couldn’t they at least have some interesting prisoners if they were going to be so boring themselves? But when Mana purposefully scuffs the heel of his shoe, the man’s head jerks up.

They study each other in the dim lighting. Mana doesn’t react to his gaze and knows he must be a sight; his whole front side is splashed with blood and he’s pretty sure he got some in his hair because the few wisps he can spot from the corner of his eye almost look like they’ve been dyed a horrendous pink. It clashes terribly with his skin tone.

The man’s eyes are a pale, milky white, and Mana thinks he’s blind. But his gaze is too intense and when Mana purposefully twitches his fingers, the man’s eyes snap to the motion. Not blind then, just weird eyes.

They’re silent and Mana really doesn’t want to be the one to break it, but the clock is ticking, and his clone has probably finished placing all of the exploding tags and is waiting for him upstairs by the entrance. So, feeling very put upon, Mana says, “Who are you?”

Not the most original question, but it works.

“You know, it’s not polite to request someone’s name without giving your own first.” The guy’s voice is soft in the silence.

He waits a beat before continuing, “Hyuuga Nastuo.” It sounds like a concession.

Mana’s heard about the Hyuuga clan and how they’re a force to be reckoned with; guess that explains the weird eyes. They’re Konohagakuran through and through. He’s surprised to find one all the way out here and wonders how Orochimaru’s men were able to capture him. He’s probably in transit, Mana thinks. Knowing Orochimaru, he wouldn’t be able to wait to get his hands on the guy. Then again, Mana wouldn’t be surprised if the shinobi here were so incompetent that they didn’t realize just who they held prisoner.

“Hatake Mana.” It’s the first time he’s introduced himself as Hatake. Before, there wasn’t anyone who didn’t already know just who he was – Orochimaru’s project Mana they called him. And, he’s not supposed to know anything about his father. Anyone who might overhear and tattle is laying in a puddle of their own blood upstairs.

Hyuuga-san’s eyes sharpen, and he seems to really look. Mana’s platinum mane is a sticking point for the guy, but he doesn’t ignore the amber eyes or pointed ears. After he’s had his fill, Hyuuga-san nods and says, “Who knew Hatake Kakashi of all people could get intimate.”

Mana latches on to that name, Hatake Kakashi. He can’t stop the widening of his eyes and goes to grip the bars in front of him. They’re electrified, but it doesn’t bother him, the static arcs harmlessly across his skin. Mana struggles for a moment with a jumble of questions before settling on, “You know about the Hatake clan?”

Hyuuga-san is quiet, his head tilting to the side as he regards Mana with obvious consideration.

“Aa, they belong to Konoha. I’ll introduce you if you get me out of here.” It seems too good to be true.

It’s not like Mana had great plans before this. His main objective was to escape, and from there, it was a tossup. He considered traveling north, to the Land of Snow in hopes of discovering any scrap of information about his mother’s clan. It was a plan born of desperation. His mother mentioned forests and ice and frigid mountains on that last fateful day, he was hoping she meant the Land of Snow. Really, it could be anywhere though.

But a clan, especially one in what you could arguably say is the strongest hidden village...there would be protection in case Orochimaru ever decided to go after him and someone to train him. Maybe they’ll have information on his mother’s clan or know someone who does. He wouldn’t have to travel all across the elemental nations in a desperate search. And, if he saved Hyuuga-san, it would help his standing in the village.

Mind made up, Mana releases his grip on the bars and takes a step away from the jail cell. Hyuuga-san can’t hide the panic that flashes across his face, thinking Mana is going to ignore him and leave. But Mana’s hands come up to rest on the tantos over his shoulders, and in a fluid motion, he unsheathes them, gives them a twirl, and strikes out in horizontal strokes.

The metal bars go crashing to the ground, sending tufts of dust into the air and the experiments down the hall into a frenzy at the noise. Hyuuga-san tenses, as if guards will come rushing onto the scene at any moment to apprehend Mana and stop the Hyuuga from dastardly escaping, but neither of those happens. There’s no one to stop Mana.

There’s a moment of tense silence when Mana tries to cut through the chakra suppressors, but he barely nicks them. It’s just a matter of bringing Hyuuga-san upstairs and sitting him by his clone while he goes back to the room of bodies and rifles through their pockets for keys. He should have left by now and reduced the base to rubble. No one’s supposed to come by for another few days, but there’s always a chance a passing squad of Oto-nin will want to stop here for the night instead of camping outside.

He hurries to find the keys and once he does, pockets them. And as he’s leaving the room, he slaps another explosive tag outside of the entrance to the cafeteria just for extra measures. It feels like he’s placing the final seal on the next part of his journey, like he’s sparking the catalyst and when it ignites, there will be no ways in which Mana can change the course of his history. Mana hopes it’s an auspicious sign.

Once he’s back by the main entrance and Hyuuga-san is leaning heavily against his clone, rubbing his sore wrists, Mana turns to address the man, “Well, lead the way then.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Hermionechan90's Dog Days.
> 
> I started flagging towards the end, maybe I'll go back later and edit it so it's actually decent prose.


End file.
